Wednesday, 14 December 2011

At the weekend, walking by night as per custom across the lower western stretches of the campus, through that small familiar patch of vernal landscape which is all that remains of natural habitat amid the wasteland of big recently-constructed science buildings and labs, one noted the presence of uniformed personnel with large flashlights, and then the following night, there was a strong sharp unpleasant industrial odour in the air, and ribbands of yellow tape by the wayside, and ominous signs posted along the tree-lined bed of Strawberry Creek warning:

DIESEL SPILL

KEEP OUT

Strawberry Creek coming out of the culvert from UC Berkeley: photo by Coro, 2009

A diesel fuel tank used to store fuel to power an emergency generator in Stanley Hall had overflowed as fuel was being transferred from a larger nearby storage tank. A sump pump then discharged the overflow into the creek. Result: creek clogged with slick, acrid sheen of diesel oil. The signposting might as well have said:

IT'S THEIR TOWN SO IT MUST BE THEIR WATER

1700 gallons of diesel fuel had been released.

Four days after the spill, the creek still stinks and remains off-limits to humans, and the university has continued to maintain a hush-hush stance on how and why the accident occurred, simply citing "equipment failure".

So this benighted observer enquired of a physicist friend, who is conversant with the doings at Stanley Hall.

And learned that bio-engineering, nanotechnology and, in particular, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging technologies (all of course largely financed by government funding) are the specialities of the house.

What do you suppose was the "equipment" that "failed", the question was asked.

"Well, the emergency generator is probably intended as a backup for cooling the helium in the big nuclear resonance spectrometer," the friend said. "The helium has to be kept around two degrees Kelvin. If it gets too hot...."

"The whole joint blows up?"

"Yes, that's what would happen."

So for any plants, birds, fish that may happen to be killed off by that goopy mass of diesel gunk, as it makes its way from the creek to the Berkeley marina and thence into the Bay, there is always the consolation of knowing that the ecological violation was suffered for a Noble Cause: ensuring that come what may, those whopping research grants will keep flowing, and the recipients of all that Dark Money will remain safe and happy.

Strawberry Creek as it leaves the park: photo by Coro, 2009

We’re alone my shadow and meYou’re alone with your shadow too The first day and the last day the same First song same as last song

The stream weeps passing under concreteHabitual deer have retreatedThe earth is covered with vehiclesMeant to secure the unknown against us

The caged bird said this place is very pretty Excellent for lunch fine for sleepingBut if I might ask one thing moreHow come nobody thought to put in a door

Booms in place in the creek at Strawberry Creek Park in west Berkeley on Monday morning at around 11:30 am: photo by Tracey Taylor/Berkeleyside, 12 December 2011

Sheen of diesel fuel on the surface of Strawberry Creek: photo by Tracey Taylor/Berkeleyside, 12 December 2011

14 comments:

I'm glad you posted both of these. They belong together. The poem is terrfic. This morning I spent between 5:30 am and 6:30 am reviewing a video presentation about Substance Abuse In The Legal Profession as part of my continuing legal education requirements. I'm sure the presenter had his heart in sort of the right place, but the presentation (and presenter) were creepy and unsettling. Between that and this, I feel positively toxic. All the photos are terrific. The title also. Curtis

That last wee bucolic creekbed patch served as a sort of stand-in Lake Country in moments of dire nature-want.

Twas there I met the original of this fellow -- who, in the present turning of events, now comes off, more and more, smelling like a rose.

Formerly there was a second lovely bucolic patch at the West end of the campus, a grove of some ninety varieties of trees, brought in and planted there at the turn of the last-century-but-one, back when people actually cared about growing noninvestments.

In the late Eighties the entire grove was ripped out to build a giant Animal Testing Facility. Five storeys underground, even now as we speak, monkeys and mice, rats and perhaps even dogs and cats have their scalps stripped back, electrodes implanted, all for the advance of ... was it mankind? Or was it the acquisition of Yet More Government Funding?

The University that without much bother survived the minor ripple of Gulf Spill negative-PR fallout re. its $500 K "research"-collusion receipt from BP, will have no trouble playing down this little "incident".

I weep w/ that stream! - though perhaps punctuated more by cursing than pebbles. I had no idea this had occurred, head buried in other messes & outrages. Innumerable, they. Oases few, and fewer each day.

not to "beat a dead" Peking Duck, howevernot being one to de:tour this out of ted Enslin's1975 SYTHESIS, page 212:

There is somestrength: a beautyin dysfunction,and a trouble.That is is diseasewhich carries beauty.Health dulls -a man with little heat.One time these thingswere other. Not in our time.Nor will we see sane man again.The last is in the future.We will not go there.To cure/ /or to be curedThe curare.

"Gentleman, rememberthe converse of the proposition:remove the cause, andthe effect cures, -is not true.' (this line in italics)

Yuck! Prospero's "approaching tide/ Will [NOT] shortly fill the reasonable shore,/ That now lies foul and muddy" -- but alas, not merely "muddy," "diesel-contaminated -- "a diesel mass of goopy gunk." Planet earth evermore an endangered species. . . . Thanks for keeping us posted on these latest developments in the the world that the humans continue to ravage (and for those lovely mandarins, with their "tuft of jungle feathers . . . animal eye". . .

The official silence on the causes of and playing-down of the effects of the diesel spill that has polluted stream and glade on the campus have failed to prevent at least one respecter of that formerly sacred precinct from sneaking through the warning notices and barriers and capturing the present state of Strawberry Creek on video. You can see the slimy scum pooling at the surface and along the banks. The ugly hunks of white plastic floating in the turbid, industrial-crud-clogged stream are absorbent materials meant to soak up the diesel. Too little, too late. All those black dots floating in the repulsive surface gunk were once living organisms.

But I have now talked to a number of people who know about these things, and learned that the purpose of the emergency generator for which the diesel fuel was to be stored has the specific purpose of ensuring that, in the event of electrical failure, the giant magnetic superconductor, which is the jewel in the crown of the empire of money that is Stanley Hall, contains helium, which must be cryogenically maintained at extremely low temperatures, approx minus 276 degrees Celsius. This would translate into approx two degrees Kelvin. That is barely above the hypothetical absolute zero. Were the helium to be allowed to suddenly heat up to, say, four degrees Kelvin, the result, I am told, might well be... no more superconductor, no more Stanley Hall, no more creek, no more campus, no more Berkeley.

If you were a dead water-strider, choked in man-made filth in what you had taken to be your natural environment, you would probably not have been interested in the fascinating applications of NMR technology. If you are an ordinary human, you probably couldn't care less. If you are a nuclear biotech engineer on the government take, you're probably just as happy that the passersby who are wondering why the creek stinks so awfully and is out of bounds to nature-lovers won't ever know.

It's just that... it was once such a pleasant little island amid that sea of busy academic enterprise.

I am not William Wordsworth but have been occasionally accused by the late canon formation engineers of lyric quietism or quietude or whatever the patronising categorical dismissal term may have been. Strawberry Creek and its sister creeks have provided pleasant reflective moments over the years. The bit of lyric quietude below was composed alongside one of those. (It is pictured in the lower photo.) The title curiously fits the moment.

This just wrenches the heart ... what little that is left is treated so terribly. As an urban dweller with a city that is also run by institutions - University of Pittsburgh and UPMC - this story is all too familiar. They can never be held in account because they own the city - the politicians, the businesses, the government, the contracts, working under shadowy provisions that allow non-profit status for multi-gazillion dollar organizations.

And, Tom, I can not get the lovely little water strider out of my brain.